America: a Beacon, not a Policeman	Consequences of Bombing Iraq	Americans Against World Empire  Homepage

>Guardian/Observer (UK)
>Sunday December 20, 1998
>
>Leader: This Colossal Misjudgement
>
>The savage saturation bombing of Iraq has provoked almost universal outrage
>and condemnation. Even in those countries supportive of American and British
>action there has been vocal criticism and a general anxiety to bring the
>bombing to an early end.
>
>These concerns are mirrored in Britain, even if suffocated in a House of
>Commons genuflecting before the twin conservatism of Mr Blair and Mr Hague.
>But dissent and concern are proper. The motives and legality of Operation
>Desert Fox are questionable; the objectives are unclear and, as far as they
>can be discerned, largely unachievable. To tell the British we must do our
>duty because we have no choice is to invite us to suspend our judgement.
>
>In truth, Britain is now in a de facto war with an Arab power with no clear
>war aims, no honourable way out and no prospect of success. Even the fall of
>Saddam Hussein and his replacement by some other authoritarian monster ­ the
>Iraqi political culture does not throw up Third-Way democrats ­ would hardly
>constitute a victory. The harsh truth is that Britain should not have been
>involved last Wednesday and the bombing should never have begun; Mr Blair
>has made a colossal misjudgement.
>
>This is machismo military intervention at its worst, and the first
>reaction ­ a gruesome Dutch auction in jingoism ­ is giving way to deep
>worry as the full stupidity of our conduct becomes clear. We have exposed
>our cities and civilian planes to the risk of terrorist counter-attack; we
>are earning the hatred of the Arab world; we have undermined the legitimacy
>of the United Nations; we compromise ourselves in Europe; and we have set in
>train possible revenge against Israel whose shock waves could radiate beyond
>the region and menace the world. And for what?
>
>These risks are being run to reduce the already enfeebled military capacity
>of a state that could not even in its pomp win a war against Iran, and where
>the key software and intelligence that so exercises the Americans and the
>British will be left intact on floppy disks; cruise missiles to destroy
>these must represent the world’s biggest ever sledgehammer to crack the
>tiniest of nuts. Much of the weapon-making capacity has been identified and
>eliminated by Unscom, and some has been moved beyond the range of cruise
>missiles by being sited in other Arab states. Worse, as Neal Ascherson
>argues, Saddam is more likely to end stronger than weaker from our ‘limited’
>war fought from the air. When we ask what should we do about Saddam, the
>answer is not to collapse into the logic of the playground bully. It is to
>be absolutely clear-headed about the threat he actually poses set against
>the risks. By that reckoning what we are doing is wildly disproportionate.
>
>A curious displacement has occurred in which the American military and
>political establishment has redirected the language of the Cold War to
>Iraq ­ and then followed up with an attack based on the doctrine of
>deterrence. As Saddam ­ a dictatorial leader of a state making weapons of
>mass destruction and threatening his neighbours, runs the argument ­ does
>not respond rationally to warnings of reprisals for his misconduct, then
>there can be no shirking the consequences. Missiles must be fired.
>
>The relationship with Iraq is hardly mutually assured destruction, but if it
>is to be stable then Saddam must know bad behaviour and non-compliance with
>UN Resolutions brings as quick and deadly response as the Soviet Union might
>have expected during the Cold War years. The Americans and British might be
>acting with regret and heavy heart but the ‘West’ did last week as it would
>have done to make nuclear deterrence work. It bombed, strafed and ‘degraded’
>military targets as much as it could.
>
>It may be that the deterrence philosophy will be vindicated by the fall of
>Saddam, but even that ‘victory’ will be hollow. No Arab will consider an
>action as anything but partisan which punishes one of their own, however
>heinous, for flouting UN Resolutions, while turning a blind eye to Israel
>for the same flouting of the UN. And in any case there is every likelihood
>that Saddam’s successor will be as dictatorial and cruel as he.
>
>For the notion that the successor regime might be a liberal capitalist
>democracy is naïve in the extreme. It betrays a wholesale misunderstanding,
>not only of the contemporary Middle East but of what is happening in many
>lands beyond Europe and North America that are not states in any sense of
>the term. These are virtually ungovernable, peopled by private warlords and
>criminal gangs kept in check only by patronage and corruption. They extend
>from the former Soviet Union to decolonised Africa. There is no rule of law,
>freedom of the press, enforceable property rights or opposition that defines
>a liberal capitalist democracy; nor any prospect of such.
>
>Iraq is in a similar structural position. Saddam holds the ring between
>Kurds in the North, the Shia in the South and opposition groups which are
>little more than mafia gangs, and does so by iron martial-law and patronage
>made stronger with every upward ratchet in sanctions and air strikes.
>Anybody succeeding him will face the same internal tensions, and will have
>to take an aggressive stance towards Israel. The choice is not between a
>dictator and a democrat; it is between rival dictators.
>
>It is for this reason that the Anglo-American action is so futile. We are
>not even declaring war with the aim of occupation, the only slight chance of
>achieving the end we want. If Iraq was a state in the Western sense then the
>punitive attacks might have delivered the goods. But Iraq is not like that.
>It is a family fiefdom based on patronage and terror, and where rational
>governance ­ and thus effective deterrence ­ is impossible. Iraq is not an
>orthodox state, and assessments of its weapons of mass destruction are
>over-estimates. The probability of Saddam responding rationally to our
>bombing is tiny. The possibility of replacing the current regime with one
>more favourable is also tiny. The risks we run are huge. Confronted by these
>realities ‘Western’ ­ that is American and British policy ­ should have been
>the opposite of what has taken place. The aim should have been, and must be,
>to keep the Unscom weapons inspectors in place at any cost, and to chip away
>at Saddam’s war-making capacity. Unscom’s connivance with Israel, close
>working with the Americans and political obduracy undermined its legitimacy.
>It should have been impartial and its power backed by economic rather than
>military sanctions. The pressure should have been to internationalise the
>sanctions on Saddam rather than fall back on American military might.
>International law, and courts to try Saddam, should have been vastly
>strengthened, not least as part of the process of introducing a non-partisan
>international order to limit the excesses of the increasing part of the
>globe where orthodox state power does not exist.
>
>Instead of that, we have bombing and all its attendant risks. The Americans,
>with their manichean world view and strong pro-Israeli lobby, have their own
>reasons for acting as they have ­ but the same is not true of Britain. Mr
>Blair feels keenly the burden of his decision, but the harsh truth is that
>what he has done is weak and easy. It would have been much tougher and
>harder to resist the Americans and attempt to redefine the West’s policy.
>But in Britain’s contemporary political culture such a stance is improbable.
>The old Left has offered the only critique, but what it says is rendered
>implausible by its lack of recognition of Saddam’s proclivity for evil and
>its implacable anti-Americanism.
>
>Mr Blair represents the new conservative orthodoxy in domestic and now
>foreign policy to which there is no reasonable challenge from a legitimate
>and level-headed social democratic Left. That role used to be fulfilled by
>the Labour Party. No more. We need it back, urgently, and if it is lost to
>the forces of reaction then we must reclaim the Labour Party from those who
>purport to redefine its role in British politics. There is too much at stake
>at home and abroad for us all to become Conservatives.
>
>***
>
>Comment: Never in the history of human conflict were so many bombs dropped
>for so few good reasons
>
>By Neal Ascherson
>
>Since air strikes on Iraq began on Wednesday, there has been a cacophonous
>roar of different explanations for them. As terrifying as the missiles and
>bombs themselves are the faces of the men and women challenged to justify
>what they are doing: the angry, harassed faces of people who do not believe
>their own arguments. Cornered, they are reduced to a single reason which is
>at once perfectly honest and utterly humiliating: we were left with no
>choice.
>
>The stated aims for the air attacks are a jumble of improbable hopes and
>discredited fantasies left over from the last eight years of confrontation
>with Saddam Hussein. None holds water. These aims, although they are changed
>and reshuffled for the media every morning, are worth analysing:
>
>To smash or "degrade" Iraq’s remaining weapons of mass destruction and the
>capacity to make them? But if Unscom (the UN weapons inspectors) cannot find
>that residue, after years of often successful search on the ground, how can
>those who now target the missiles and bombs?
>
>To force Saddam to take Unscom back and grant it full access? But the
>bombardment makes this improbable for the foreseeable future. And if the
>mission ever does return, why shouldn’t Saddam repeat his cycle of defiance?
>
>To waste the Revolutionary Guard, supposedly massed around Baghdad, so the
>regular army might summon courage for a coup? But how do you destroy a unit
>by bombing its barracks, with no element of surprise? And where is the
>evidence for up-country colonels plotting rebellion?
>
>To kill Saddam? Sheer lottery luck might achieve that, if a laser-guided
>bomb came down his ventilation shaft or his armoured limo fell into a
>crater. But let’s grow up. And who can be sure that Saddam’s appointed heir
>would lose control?
>
>To discredit Saddam in the eyes of his people? But will the attacks not
>achieve the opposite: bolster his claim to hero status as the Arab leader
>who defies the military might of the New Crusaders?
>
>To open a breach which the Iraqi opposition, at home or abroad, can exploit?
>Which opposition ­ the tame one which takes its cue from Washington or the
>real one which detests Western interference almost as much as Saddam does?
>Given support and unity, the Kurds could probably deal with the Saddam
>regime. But that is an unthinkable thought; marshalling the Kurds would
>outrage the Turks, and keeping Turkey onside is crucial to American foreign
>policy.
>
>To encourage the Arab governments opposed to Saddam? But the evidence
>suggests those governments, far from rejoicing over the offensive, are
>deeply nervous of it. They fear their own people even more than Iraq, and
>foresee angry mobs in the street. Does the Anglo-American ‘guarantee’ of
>protection against Saddam extend to sending in the Marines to guard Arabian
>palaces and open fire on mobs? They suspect it does not. The bombing can’t
>be over too soon for them.
>
>To assert that respect for human rights and international laws and
>conventions is now a universal concern, overriding the sovereignty of
>criminal states? So it should be. But how human rights are improved by three
>nights of air bombardment, involving many civilian deaths, is not easy to
>grasp in the Middle East. The air attack is a statement of sorts, amounting
>to: ‘Your government has provoked us, so we are bombing you.’
>
>But that is hardly a statement about the sanctity of international law, or a
>defence of individual rights against a cruel and repressive state. And, on
>the matter of universality and impartiality, a few more Anglo-American
>references to Israel would have been in order. Israel, too, possesses
>weapons of mass destruction, and ignores UN resolutions about South Lebanon
>or the West Bank settlements. What pressure to conform will be applied
>there?
>
>In short, the United States and Britain are engaged in a military action
>which cannot achieve the ambitious aims listed ­ as something of an
>afterthought ­ to justify it. In a shrewd newspaper article last week, Sir
>Michael Rose (who commanded Unprofor in Bosnia) suggested that air strikes
>could perhaps damage Saddam’s deadly arsenal but not his intent to rebuild
>that arsenal. "Current Western policy is therefore doomed to failure in the
>long term, with each round of military activity producing progressively more
>politically negative consequences in the surrounding region…"
>
>Sir Michael thought that only what he called "absolute war" could achieve
>such aims, by overthrowing the enemy. "Limited war" could never do so. But
>even "limited war" overstates what the American and British aircraft have
>been doing to Iraq. This operation is not so much a war as a thumping. The
>term for it, now unusable because of its colonialist incorrectness, is
>"punitive expedition". It is as if a company of the fifth Loamshires, in
>topees, had marched inland to burn Chief Saddam’s kraal and smash his stool
>of office before marching back to the coast again. It is as if Lord
>Salisbury, incensed by the debagging of a British consul, had sent an
>ironclad to bombard some palm-fringed port until its minarets fell over.
>
>Iraq, after all, is where aircraft were first used for punitive expeditions.
>Back in 1924, the commander of the RAF’s 45 Squadron wrote: "The Arab and
>Kurd... now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage; they now
>know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village (vide attached photos) can
>be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by
>four or five machines." He felt that it was important to ensure a scale of
>casualties that produced "a real as opposed to a purely moral effect". That
>squadron leader’s name was Arthur Harris, and he finally made his point 21
>years later at Dresden.
>
>Thumping an adversary, to punish or to demand compliance with something, is
>not so much war as symbolic violence. It belongs to an age in which world
>order was thought to depend on lesser breeds knowing their place. But it
>gives notice that if no apology or compliance is forthcoming, something far,
>far worse will ensue, and in that sense the punitive expedition does not yet
>belong to the past. It remains still usable ­ as long as its implied threat
>of worse to come is credible.
>
>When President Reagan bombed Tripoli in 1985 (from British airfields),
>Muammar Gadaffi took the message seriously and stayed unusually subdued for
>a few years. So did the Bosnian Serbs, when the Nato jets finally stopped
>drawing patterns in the clouds over Sarajevo and hit a few Serbian ‘assets’.
>But this is not the case with Iraq in 1998.
>
>It is simply not credible to anybody that worse may follow. Not to Saddam
>nor his neighbours, not to Israel nor Turkey, not to the Kurds nor the Shia
>peoples of the Iraqi south, not to the European Union nor even to the
>governments and public opinion of Britain and the United States. None of
>these seriously believes that if Saddam now remains impenitent and
>non-compliant he will be visited by a far more devastating and ‘absolute’
>form of war.
>
>US Defence Secretary William Cohen made that quite clear on Thursday, when
>he said that the aim of the operation was to get the Unscom mission back
>into Iraq, "and failing that, we go for a policy of containment". In other
>words, this enormous din in the night sky over Baghdad is not a warning of
>anything, not even a symbol. It is just a yell of rage.
>
>The Americans and the British are not bombarding Iraq to achieve ‘aims’, but
>because there was nothing else left for them to do. That is the ignominious
>bottom line. They had threatened to use force if Saddam obstructed the UN
>weapons-inspection team again, and he very deliberately did so. So they had
>to bomb. The French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, put it with Gallic
>elegance: "It was inevitable, but unnecessary."
>
>But if you play chess and you see that there is only one move which your
>queen can make, you become aware of something: your opponent is a better
>player. And the only player here who has a rational, realisable aim is
>Saddam.
>
>The initiative has been his for some time now. Each confrontation with the
>Americans, whether it leads to the use of force or not, has the effect of
>wrenching the cracks in the ‘international community’ further open.
>
>Little remains of the UN consensus on Iraq. Russia is recalling ambassadors
>from Washington and London. France is outspokenly critical of the bombing.
>The German government accepts that Saddam brought the attack on himself, but
>expresses fervent hope that the attacks will soon end; right-wing German
>newspapers declare that the whole action is futile. The Arab world is
>enraged. So are the Chinese.
>
>The international will to maintain sanctions against Iraq has been further
>weakened. All this appears to have been part of Saddam’s calculation in
>provoking the onslaught. Compared to this diplomatic gain, what are a few
>hundred or thousand Iraqi lives to him? This is a game he would be delighted
>to replay over and over again, if the US would be so obliging.
>
>The future is ugly. Iraq will be ‘contained’, but sanctions will fade away ­
>leaving the Iraqi people slightly less poor but still ruled by Saddam
>Hussein. One day he will be overthrown, but probably not by anybody the West
>will fancy. Meanwhile, he will resume tinkering with nerve gas, germ warfare
>and nuclear bomb technology. The Americans will then hit him again ­ and if
>they do not, the Israelis will. Nothing has been solved.
>